Introduction
Khan (2005) states that online students need to understand that there is an infrastructure supporting them in their learning needs. (p. 352) For LEEP students, this support takes two forms: a) face-to-face during on-campus requirements for 'boot-camp' and each course, and b) online from week-to-week and day-to-day. The various support services that are provided to students are described in the following sections.
Pre-requisites for LEEP
The low technology requirement enables LEEP students to succeed with very little experience and knowledge of online technology.Some surveys have been conducted in the past, at entry level, to determine the skill sets of the incoming students (Written Interview with Matt Beth). While LEEP does pride itself with a highly competitive admissions process,there is no specific filtering process based on the online learning skills of students. The LEEP website currently lists the basic set of computer skills sets that are required to apply for the program and they are very basic (Also refer to Technology Report for details).
Admissions Support
The LEEP admissions process is fully online. The School's web site includes an overview of the admission's process and a direct link to the application. Admissions resources also includes FAQs, which provided detailed instructions on completing the online application. Applicants may contact admissions staff with questions by phone and email. Prospective students may also access information on the LEEP program through the Division of Academic Outreach of the School of Continuing Education. Academic Outreach provides a one-page summary on LEEP and the program's admissions requirements and links applicants directly to the LEEP web page.
Learner Orientation & Support
The one week mandatory ‘boot-camp’ at the start of the program is designed to introduce the students to the program and provide the necessary orientation to online learning. The boot-camp includes workshops on the various technologies that will be used by LEEP students. In addition, workshops are conducted on synchronous and asynchronous learning. The general orientation classes include sessions with the advising coordinator where these issues are addressed. Finally “LEEP Unplugged” sessions are conducted where new students talk to a panel of LEEP alums about their experiences with the program, the highs and the lows, the challenges and rewarding aspects (Written Interview with Matt Beth). This enables students to get a very good idea on how to cope with the online learning environment. Once into the program, the Moodle home page provides a number of resources for technical and academic support.
Library & Bookstore
LEEP students have access to the University's Distance Library Services. In addition to accessing online journal articles, students may request scanned copies of journals not available online at no charge. Students may also request library books be mailed to their home address. LEEP students have full access to the library's online help desk and to online training materials.
LEEP students are introduced to the library services available to them during their on campus orientation. They receive hands on training on how to use online catalogs, access materials remotely, and request delivery (Searing, 2007). Students may access the distance library service directly through the library's website, through a link in Moodle, and through a link on the Division Academic Outreach's web page.
The School also provides a web page with links to online bookstores, including the University of Illinois Campus bookstore.
Student Advising
Upon admission, all LEEP students are assigned an advisor, who is available by phone and email. In addition, LEEP students participate in group advising sessions during orientation. Students often meet face-to-face with their advisor during the on campus weekends each semester (Montague interview with Adam Fein). The School's web site includes a page that describes the advising services available to students.
Faculty & Staff Assistance
LEEP courses are highly interactive and there is constant communication between instructors and students and also among peers, both in the weekly live synchronous session and the asynchronous discussion forums. Instructors are also available during office hours to help students and provide assistance in their learning tasks. Instructors are also available via email, phone, Skype etc . Apart from the instructors, the tech support staff, advising coordinator, program administrators are all available to assist students with their academic issues and offer help (Written Interview with Matt Beth). A complete staff and faculty directory is openly available on the School's web site.
LEEP Instructor response time
LEEP instructors do not have a specific requirement regarding response time to student queries, but 24 hours is accepted as the general rule. All LEEP instructors understand that although the course meets synchronously once-a-week, "everyone is engaged with course/content/each other throughout the week." (Q&A interview with Matt Beth)
Help Desk, LEEP GAs, and TAs
GSLIS has a Help Desk which is accessible by a number of means. Students can access it at the public website at http://www.lis.illinois.edu/helpdesk or from links on the Moodle homepage as the top link under Tech Support. On the Help Desk web page students can find the help desk e-mail address help@support.lis.illinois.edu, the 800- phone number and the twitter feed URL: http://twitter.com/GSLIS_Help_Desk . The Help Desk also has a physical location in Room 228 and it's open Monday - Friday 8am - 5pm (CST). In addition, during LEEP synchronous sessions, there is an online tech assistant, called a LEEP GA, who is available for tech support for the entire session.
Some course are also assigned one or more TAs. These TAs are either PhD students who assist with the learning content of the course or other graduate students who assist with specialized content of a particular course. They are not involved with tech support for synchronous sessions or other requirements, but rather direct instruction of relevant content.
Emergency phone
The Emergency Outage Cellular Phone-based Service was started in 2006 for after-hours emergencies concerning system outages and server failures. It's staffed 24/7 every day of the year by Ken Spelke and the Office of Information Technology and Research Staff. Callers can expect an answer within a reasonable time frame and Ken's and the dean's phone numbers are also given on the Emergency phone web page in case the Emergency phone isn't working.
Tutorials
There are online tutorials for both students and instructors in GSLIS Moodle for the following programs: Moodle, Elluminate, Confluence (wiki), Unix, Audacity, Zotero, UIUC RefWorks, oxYgen (xml editor) and Double Telnet. There are other tutorials that help with specific issues: cookie and pop-up management, screenshot creation, web page design (SeaMonkey, Kompozer, HTML template, CSS), group work resources, and making collection development maps.
Social Support Networks, Student Activities and Student Organizations
Community Forums, accessible through the Moodle login, are newly established to replace the Legacy bulletin boards. A student can post a question or topic on a discussion board in the Community Forums to get answers from classmates. The topics are grouped under: essentials, extensions, opportunities and miscellanies. Students also communicate with each other, faculty and program staff through social networks such as Facebook and Twitter (Montague interview with Adam Fein)
The School strongly encourages and actively facilitates LEEP student participation in the GSLIS community. “We have worked hard to include our online students in every aspect of the life of the School, so that there is one student body, half online and half on campus, and not two. Everything from graduation to visiting speakers to the meetings of student groups is streamed live to the online students, and archived online for future reference” (Strategic report, 2006, p. 11). Thus, LEEP students have an opportunity to participate in on campus events virtually. They also have the opportunity for face-to-face interaction. At orientation, students are introduced to student organizations and follow up occurs each semester during the on campus weekends (Montague interview with Adam Fein).
Career and Alumni Services
The School web page includes links to resources for program graduates. One of those resources in a community forums job board. Others are links to professional organizations.
The School has an active alumni association, the Library School Alumni Association. Part of the association's mission is to
"to be a partner with the University of Illinois Alumni Association in supporting alumni in their professional lives" (GSLIS Alumni Association web page). According to Rae Anne Montague, the school engages alumni by providing opportunities for alumni to be involved in the GSLIS community, helping alumni become networked into the professional community, and by using social media (Montague interview with Adam Fein).
Conclusion
Since it was introduced in 1997, the LEEP program has grown considerably; the school has been able to support this growth while maintaining its status as the number one ranked school of library and information science in the country. Assistant Dean Rae-Montague attributes part of this success to the school's "high touch" approach to student services (Montague interview with Adam Fein). As we've seen above, the GSLIS provides robust services which are easily accessible to online students.
Khan (2005) states that online students need to understand that there is an infrastructure supporting them in their learning needs. (p. 352) For LEEP students, this support takes two forms: a) face-to-face during on-campus requirements for 'boot-camp' and each course, and b) online from week-to-week and day-to-day. The various support services that are provided to students are described in the following sections.
Pre-requisites for LEEP
The low technology requirement enables LEEP students to succeed with very little experience and knowledge of online technology.Some surveys have been conducted in the past, at entry level, to determine the skill sets of the incoming students (Written Interview with Matt Beth). While LEEP does pride itself with a highly competitive admissions process,there is no specific filtering process based on the online learning skills of students. The LEEP website currently lists the basic set of computer skills sets that are required to apply for the program and they are very basic (Also refer to Technology Report for details).
Admissions Support
The LEEP admissions process is fully online. The School's web site includes an overview of the admission's process and a direct link to the application. Admissions resources also includes FAQs, which provided detailed instructions on completing the online application. Applicants may contact admissions staff with questions by phone and email. Prospective students may also access information on the LEEP program through the Division of Academic Outreach of the School of Continuing Education. Academic Outreach provides a one-page summary on LEEP and the program's admissions requirements and links applicants directly to the LEEP web page.
Learner Orientation & Support
The one week mandatory ‘boot-camp’ at the start of the program is designed to introduce the students to the program and provide the necessary orientation to online learning. The boot-camp includes workshops on the various technologies that will be used by LEEP students. In addition, workshops are conducted on synchronous and asynchronous learning. The general orientation classes include sessions with the advising coordinator where these issues are addressed. Finally “LEEP Unplugged” sessions are conducted where new students talk to a panel of LEEP alums about their experiences with the program, the highs and the lows, the challenges and rewarding aspects (Written Interview with Matt Beth). This enables students to get a very good idea on how to cope with the online learning environment. Once into the program, the Moodle home page provides a number of resources for technical and academic support.
Library & Bookstore
LEEP students have access to the University's Distance Library Services. In addition to accessing online journal articles, students may request scanned copies of journals not available online at no charge. Students may also request library books be mailed to their home address. LEEP students have full access to the library's online help desk and to online training materials.
LEEP students are introduced to the library services available to them during their on campus orientation. They receive hands on training on how to use online catalogs, access materials remotely, and request delivery (Searing, 2007). Students may access the distance library service directly through the library's website, through a link in Moodle, and through a link on the Division Academic Outreach's web page.
The School also provides a web page with links to online bookstores, including the University of Illinois Campus bookstore.
Student Advising
Upon admission, all LEEP students are assigned an advisor, who is available by phone and email. In addition, LEEP students participate in group advising sessions during orientation. Students often meet face-to-face with their advisor during the on campus weekends each semester (Montague interview with Adam Fein). The School's web site includes a page that describes the advising services available to students.
Faculty & Staff Assistance
LEEP courses are highly interactive and there is constant communication between instructors and students and also among peers, both in the weekly live synchronous session and the asynchronous discussion forums. Instructors are also available during office hours to help students and provide assistance in their learning tasks. Instructors are also available via email, phone, Skype etc . Apart from the instructors, the tech support staff, advising coordinator, program administrators are all available to assist students with their academic issues and offer help (Written Interview with Matt Beth). A complete staff and faculty directory is openly available on the School's web site.
LEEP Instructor response time
LEEP instructors do not have a specific requirement regarding response time to student queries, but 24 hours is accepted as the general rule. All LEEP instructors understand that although the course meets synchronously once-a-week, "everyone is engaged with course/content/each other throughout the week." (Q&A interview with Matt Beth)
Help Desk, LEEP GAs, and TAs
GSLIS has a Help Desk which is accessible by a number of means. Students can access it at the public website at http://www.lis.illinois.edu/helpdesk or from links on the Moodle homepage as the top link under Tech Support. On the Help Desk web page students can find the help desk e-mail address help@support.lis.illinois.edu, the 800- phone number and the twitter feed URL: http://twitter.com/GSLIS_Help_Desk . The Help Desk also has a physical location in Room 228 and it's open Monday - Friday 8am - 5pm (CST). In addition, during LEEP synchronous sessions, there is an online tech assistant, called a LEEP GA, who is available for tech support for the entire session.
Some course are also assigned one or more TAs. These TAs are either PhD students who assist with the learning content of the course or other graduate students who assist with specialized content of a particular course. They are not involved with tech support for synchronous sessions or other requirements, but rather direct instruction of relevant content.
Emergency phone
The Emergency Outage Cellular Phone-based Service was started in 2006 for after-hours emergencies concerning system outages and server failures. It's staffed 24/7 every day of the year by Ken Spelke and the Office of Information Technology and Research Staff. Callers can expect an answer within a reasonable time frame and Ken's and the dean's phone numbers are also given on the Emergency phone web page in case the Emergency phone isn't working.
Tutorials
There are online tutorials for both students and instructors in GSLIS Moodle for the following programs: Moodle, Elluminate, Confluence (wiki), Unix, Audacity, Zotero, UIUC RefWorks, oxYgen (xml editor) and Double Telnet. There are other tutorials that help with specific issues: cookie and pop-up management, screenshot creation, web page design (SeaMonkey, Kompozer, HTML template, CSS), group work resources, and making collection development maps.
Social Support Networks, Student Activities and Student Organizations
Community Forums, accessible through the Moodle login, are newly established to replace the Legacy bulletin boards. A student can post a question or topic on a discussion board in the Community Forums to get answers from classmates. The topics are grouped under: essentials, extensions, opportunities and miscellanies. Students also communicate with each other, faculty and program staff through social networks such as Facebook and Twitter (Montague interview with Adam Fein)
The School strongly encourages and actively facilitates LEEP student participation in the GSLIS community. “We have worked hard to include our online students in every aspect of the life of the School, so that there is one student body, half online and half on campus, and not two. Everything from graduation to visiting speakers to the meetings of student groups is streamed live to the online students, and archived online for future reference” (Strategic report, 2006, p. 11). Thus, LEEP students have an opportunity to participate in on campus events virtually. They also have the opportunity for face-to-face interaction. At orientation, students are introduced to student organizations and follow up occurs each semester during the on campus weekends (Montague interview with Adam Fein).
Career and Alumni Services
The School web page includes links to resources for program graduates. One of those resources in a community forums job board. Others are links to professional organizations.
The School has an active alumni association, the Library School Alumni Association. Part of the association's mission is to
"to be a partner with the University of Illinois Alumni Association in supporting alumni in their professional lives" (GSLIS Alumni Association web page). According to Rae Anne Montague, the school engages alumni by providing opportunities for alumni to be involved in the GSLIS community, helping alumni become networked into the professional community, and by using social media (Montague interview with Adam Fein).
Conclusion
Since it was introduced in 1997, the LEEP program has grown considerably; the school has been able to support this growth while maintaining its status as the number one ranked school of library and information science in the country. Assistant Dean Rae-Montague attributes part of this success to the school's "high touch" approach to student services (Montague interview with Adam Fein). As we've seen above, the GSLIS provides robust services which are easily accessible to online students.
References
Q & A interview with Matt Beth, GSLIS IT manager
emergency phone (Moodle): https://courses.lis.illinois.edu/_leepbb/getmsg.cgi?ng=6E3IdWiDkp1u6E89ec5WhVgHb8d2jw9maaaXdW3I5WbebpnX6IgHiSr6lG5n3G7u&class=6w3IeQhVjw3K6M7PdWeQ&num=1962&semester=763Aec&sort=thread&all=1&ticket=ST-49991-dmddKAjogzdtMGb4MOV2
HRE533 Week 8 recorded interview between Adam Fein and Rae Anne Montague
community forums (Moodle): https://courses.lis.illinois.edu/course/view.php?id=682
tutorials & resources (Moodle): https://courses.lis.illinois.edu/course/view.php?id=669
GSLIS admissions web page:http://www.lis.illinois.edu/admissions
GSLIS textbooks web page: http://www.lis.illinois.edu/academics/courses/textbooks
GSLIS advising web page:http://www.lis.illinois.edu/academics/programs/ms/advising
GSLIS Library School Alumni Association web page: http://www.lis.illinois.edu/people/alumni/lsaa
Academic Outreach, School of Continuing Education, LEEP profile: http://www.continuinged.illinois.edu/oce-sites/outreach/profile_leep.cfm
University of Illinois Library, Distance Library Services web page: http://www.library.illinois.edu/distance/
Searing, S. (2007). Integrating Assessment into Recurring Information Literacy Instruction:
https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/1793
Unit Strategic Plan for the Graduate School of Library and Information Science (2006). http://www.lis.illinois.edu/sites/default/files/attachments/page/4447/GSLIS_StrategicPlan.5-10-06.pdf